As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
“The following theses are from Craig Carter’s new book, Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism (Baker Academic, 2021). These theses are a corrective to the relational theism so prevalent in Protestantism, and serve to help evangelicals today return to the biblical, classical, and Nicene doctrine of God.” - Credo
James R. Gordon argues against the Eternal Functional Subordination view of Ware and Grudem and in favor of the “doctrine of divine simpicity.” - Credo
“Taking its cue from social redefinitions of the Trinity, evangelicals have redefined the Trinity as a society, one in which each person has his own center of consciousness and will. As a result, a core doctrine like inseparable operations is foreign to many and sometimes held in disregard.” - Credo
“Simply Trinity: The Unmanipulated Father, Son, and Spirit. The book… does two things. First, it shows how a good portion of evangelical theology on the Trinity has drifted from the classical Christian tradition.
I’ve been reading Leonardo Boff’s work Trinity and Society. Boff is a Roman Catholic liberation theologian who may or may not be a Marxist. This is perhaps the most thought-provoking book on the Trinity I’ve yet read; right up there with Jurgen Moltmann’s Trinity and the Kingdom. Both these gentlemen are social trinitarians. They had a formative influence on Millard Erickson’s own monograph on the Trinity, which is excellent.
“One could immediately argue that God is the center of everything and deserves our God-centeredness, and I would fully concur. Nevertheless, I’m convinced we can more fully establish the inherent loving, unselfish nature of God by clarifying three important truths.” - Rooted Thinking
Read the companion article.
It’s not partisan to declare that social trinitarianism abandons Nicene concepts of divine Personhood.1 It does. It adopts a completely different framework. Many non-confessional evangelicals likely adopt it unwittingly.
I’d planned to post the next article in my short series about “personhood” in the context of the Trinity. But, alas, my intellectual bandwidth is unequal to the task right now. Next week, though, the article about the social trinitarian understanding of “person” is coming!
The doctrine of the Trinity tells us there is “One Being, three Persons.” Of course, it’s more complicated than all that, but we’ll leave it there! In this definition, what is a “person?” That’s a hard question. Two main views are common today; the classical model and the social model. The Church has traditionally held to the classical view. However, if you ask the right questions, you’ll likely find most Christians actually believe in the social model.
The doctrine of the Trinity is hard to teach, because there are so many ancient heresies to guard against and because, well … it’s complicated. But, the Scriptures present God as triune. That means we need to teach about Him. We need to teach Christians to know Him and love Him as He is; and He’s triune.
Discussion